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Raven and Skull

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Wednesday, 30 May 2018

I have a novel coming out next month: Doll House.It’s a horror
story (similar to my previous novel, Raven and Skull) and because it deals with the uncanny, it got me thinking about
the supernatural.

My experience with the supernatural has been, thankfully,
very limited. I tell colleagues and students that I don’t believe in ghost or
spirits during daylight hours. However, when it’s dark, and if I’ve been
watching a scary film or reading an unsettling novel, I’ll turn every light in
the house on if I have to go to the bathroom.Sometimes, if I really feel unnerved, I’ll beg my wife to accompany me
to the quieter corners of Chez Lister.
I feel confident, if we’re ever faced
with something menacing, unnatural or otherworldly, she’ll know what to do.

So, when a student of mine asked if I wanted to take
advantage of her ticket to a local ghost hunt, I was surprised to hear myself
accept the invitation. The student wasn’t able to make the tour and she didn’t
want the ticket to go to waste. I’d always wondered what went on at such events,
so I accepted.

Naturally, I took my wife in case I genuinely encountered anything
spooky.

The ghost tour started late at night. I’m an old man
nowadays and ten o’clock at night is more like bedtime than time to head out
and start walking around an old cinema that is now being used (during daylight
hours) as marketplace. Nevertheless, I was excited and armed with a torch and
my trusty phone, I wrapped myself up wearing thermal underwear, a woolly hat,
heavy denims and steel toecap work boots.

The organisers gave everyone involved a chance to work with EVP
equipment, crystals and Ouija boards. I’m not a big fan of Ouija boards (I’ve
yet to read a story or watch a film where one of those things provides a happy
ending), so my wife and I declined the invitation to play with one of those. I
also begged off the idea of participating in a séance because I’m not comfortable
holding hands with strangers in the dark.

But I was happy wandering around the site, chatting with
other ghost hunters and feeling goosebumps when they told me about their
personal supernatural encounters.In the
silence of the deserted cinema/marketplace, I could hear the one-sided conversations
going on in the séances. I could hear gasps of incredulity coming from those
following the Ouija board’s planchette, and I spoke with people who claimed to
have experienced inexplicable encounters.

One woman told me she had been talking to the ghost of a man
who had been a regular patron at the cinema when it still was a cinema. “His
hair was glossy with Brylcream,” she told me.“And he said his name was Jim.” As a writer, I thought the narrative of
her story was somewhat disappointing because Jim’s existence seemed to lack a
point. Did he want revenge, or closure? Or was he simply lingering in the
afterlife, communing with the living, so he could advocate the lasting powers
of Brylcream?

We didn’t manage to stay
for the whole night.

As I said before, I’m an old man with an old man’s need for
sleep. Worse, I have an old man’s bladder and, although my wife will put up
with a lot of things from me, she seemed reluctant to accompany me to the gent’s
toilets in the supposedly haunted cinema.However, one of the pictures I took from that evening did make me think
the evening hadn’t been a waste of time.

Admittedly, a lot of my friends claim this is a dust mote,
or some sort of camera flash. But, personally, I’m convinced this is the
picture of a spirit. More importantly, I think this is a picture of Jim – that
is, what he looks like without the ghostly façade of a human form. The reasons
why I feel sure this is Jim is because, after I took the photograph, I had an irresistible
urge to go and buy Brylcream. And this is more remarkable when you realise I’m
bald.

Doll House is
published by Caffeine Nights Publishing and will be available from June 28th
2018.Treat yourself to something far scarier
than dust motes.